Good morning, Madam Chair, committee members and fellow witnesses.

I'm joining you today.... Temporarily, I'm in the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh peoples in what is now known as Vancouver.

Women's Shelters Canada is a national organization with a membership of 16 provincial and territorial associations. We run a national searchable website to help anyone in Canada to find a shelter near them, called sheltersafe.ca, and we are connected to over 600 violence against women—VAW—women's shelters that support survivors. We support these shelters.

Femicide is on the rise. We now commonly say that one woman is killed in Canada every other day and that one woman is killed by a male partner once a week. On Thursday last week, as we've already heard, a victim named Brkti Berhe was stabbed to death in front of her two children at a park in Ottawa.

We need danger assessments for every woman. Every woman connected to a service should undergo a danger assessment. Shelters frequently see this danger. They recognize the level of risk and act accordingly. In some cases, these are misunderstood or ignored by other social services, so then a woman is not adequately protected.

Some of the signs we've heard about today—which include damage to property; harm to companion animals; and verbal, physical or psychological abuse that includes coercive control—are also red flags. It is true that there will not always be physical violence, but strangulation or choking is a factor, as is the presence of firearms. These are all considered within a danger assessment, but they are not always recognized as a threat of femicide by all services.

There is a clear link between femicide and IPV, intimate partner violence. The vast majority of perpetrators are men, and with these known risk factors we also know that there is an increased level of danger when a victim decides to leave. The most serious IPV cases should be reviewed by a collaborative group of services with a wraparound protocol, including health services, children's services, law enforcement, shelters, education and all social services, with a view always to protecting women and their families.

Women are not believed, and sometimes women's services are not believed. Danger assessments can be played down. We need to change this and always believe women. This is what saves lives. We need a funded, robust emergency transition housing system. I recently visited a shelter in a small town in southern Alberta. It receives 1,500 calls a year, but it can only manage to directly house under 350 of those women in a community of around 100,000. This is a huge turn-away number, and there is a point at which this becomes another serious danger with regard to femicide.

As I said, shelters are able to assess danger and safely plan accordingly, but if we do not have enough beds or emergency beds for women, then until the shelter is funded fully as a whole, we cannot support every woman who needs it, where and when she needs it, for as long as she needs it. That is what will keep women safe.

In addition, the housing crisis is impacting femicide. We need safe, affordable housing for every woman. Women are staying longer in emergency shelters because they cannot find safe housing. When they do find it, they are still at risk. I recently heard about a case in which the police had informed a woman in the community that her abuser had found out where she was. She had left that abuser safely, transitioned through a shelter and found private, safe accommodation. She did not want to leave her safe housing, because of the impossibility of finding that again. The risk of losing her home again and again puts her at even greater danger because of the volatile, unreliable and worrying housing system.

We need a stronger system for collecting national data on femicides. We lack clear, definable, consistent, agreed-upon protocols across Canada through all health, legal, policing and social-work jurisdictions. With these data, it would be easier to know how to intervene, what multiple signs to look for and what can be adapted to different communities, because not all femicides happen in exactly the same way.

I've highlighted four key steps: coordinated danger assessments, improved shelter funding, better affordable housing and disaggregated data.

I also encourage you to consider the full recommendations of the Mass Casualty Commission and the national action plan on violence against women and gender-based violence.

We owe it to every woman and to families to do better.

For that, I thank the committee for taking time to study this issue.